Latin American Youth: Anger and Disenchantment on the Margins

In 1992, during the Los Angeles riots sparked by the police beating of Rodney King, nearly 1,000 Salvadoran youths were rounded up by INS agents and deported to El Salvador. As the anti-immigration backlash deepened and public attitudes toward juvenile offenders became more punitive, the INS launched its Violent Gang Task Force, targeting immigrants with criminal records for deportation to their countries of origin. From Los Angeles to Chile, young people face the contradictions of neoliberalism and its impact on youth.

In the wake of the virtual disappearance of educational institutions as places for the socialization and integration of young people into the world of work, policing has taken their place. Criminalizing youth represents an attempt to write off and control the growing anger and disenchantment of young people who live on the margins of a system which offers them few alternatives. These are the issues we tackle in this Report.

July/August
1998
Volume: 
32
Number: 
1

Taking Note

A Call to Arms
Jo-Marie Burt
On June 2, 1998, the New York Times ran a front-page report on U.S. military aid to Colombia. The article—all 71 paragraphs of it—is important less for what it says than what it represents.

Intro

LATIN AMERICAN YOUTH Anger and Disenchantment on the Margins
NACLA
In 1992, during the Los Angeles riots sparked by the police beating of Rodney King, nearly 1,000 Salvadoran youths were rounded up by INS agents and deported to El Salvador. As the anti-immigration backlash deepened and public attitudes toward juvenile offenders became more punitive, the INS launched its Violent Gang Task Force, targeting immigrants with criminal records for deportation to their countries of origin.

Open Forum

Mexico: A Time to Kill
Adolfo Gilly
Between June 8 and 10, 1998, members of the Mexican army and the police killed 11 campesinos in the state of Guerrero and eight in Chiapas. In neither case was there resistance or armed confrontation. In both cases, there were over 1,000 military and police operatives armed with tanks, bazookas and automatic weapons. In both cases, the locals fled into the surrounding hills.

Updates

Few Surprises at Sandinista Congress
Lisa Zimmerman
When former president Daniel Ortega told the Nicaraguan people that the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) would "rule from below" following their 1990 electoral defeat, few supporters ques-tioned his logic. The Sandinistas were braced for a frontal assault by the new administration of Violeta Chamorro and were gearing up for a battle to defend the sweeping changes they had achieved during the 1980s in land reform, health care and education.
Latin American Journalists Under the Gun
Barbara Belejack
On May 20, 1998, Alfredo Yabràn, a leading Argentine businessman and the main suspect in a criminal investigation that sent shock waves through the government of President Carlos Menem, committed suicide at one of his estates in the province of Entre Rios, 180 miles north of Buenos Aires. Judge José Luis Macchi had issued a warrant for his arrest five days earlier after a former policeman's ex-wife testified that Yabràn was behind the murder of photographer José Luis Cabezas, whose body was found in a badly burned car in the seaside resort of Pinamar on January 25, 1997.
Scorched Earth in a Time of Peace
James Black
They started shooting at people. Then they threw tear gas grenades and torched the houses. We fled for almost a mile, but then I fell when a grenade hit me and burned my ankle. Everything was burned to the ground I went hungry for the next three days, as there was nothing to eat.

Report

Heroes or Hooligans: Media Portrayals of Peruvian Youth
Eduardo Gónzalez-Cueva
On February 28, 1995, hundreds of people marched through the streets of Comas, a popular district in northern Lima, to pay their last respects to Yenuri Chiltuala, a young soldier who had died days earlier near the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border. Municipal authorities and leaders of civic associations led the procession as Peruvian flags intermingled with white flags to protest the border war.
Soccer and Devotion in the Barrios of Santiago
Pedro Lemebel
The empty lots of land which dot the and landscapes of Santiago's urban periphery were once planned as tree-lined plazas and recreational areas for the residents of the city's shanytowns, a status that they never attained. Instead, they became the dusty fields on which generations of young people have come of age playing soccer.
The Children of War: Street Gangs in El Salvador
Donna DeCesare
Edgar Bolaños, also known as Shy Boy, trudges to the edge of a soccer field with his friernd Scrappy a few steps behind. They are searching for the "original" Shy Boy. The walls of this remote village in rural Sonsonate are marked with gang symbols, but Shy Boy passes the graffiti disinterestedly.

Reviews

Book Review Essay: Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S. Intervention and Hegemony, by William I. Robinson
Roger Burbach
Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S.

In Brief

Former Dictator Arrested for Stealing Children During Dirty War
Notisur
BUENOS AIRES-Former Argentine dictator Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1978) was arrested June 9 on charges that he was responsible for the kidnapping of children born to women who were imprisoned and "disappeared" during the period of military rule (1976-1983). If convicted, Videla could receive a 25-year sentence.